(Little Rock is somewhere far away from home, far from what we’ve always known)

        I told Anne that the world I lived in was as wide as the tip of my thumb; larger than some but smaller than most. She scoffed and said most of the worlds she knew lived only in her head, and the veracity lived in the minds of those that truly live in them—or something like that. She zipped her jacket briskly from knee to neck and gripped tight to my wrist, letting the dogs trample out the backdoor before us. Once outside, she effortlessly clasped the leash onto her smallest dog, giggling about some segment she saw in a late night show two nights prior. She said it’s funny how magicians can fool the public by simply mastering the technique of hiding things they don’t want others to see. She claimed it’s the essence of magic within all aspects of life, what is hidden is what makes things wondrous, and why everyone is curious about at least one thing they don’t understand. 

       We walked along the coast, forest on the right, ocean the left. The milky pink sky melted further down the horizon and Becca was pleading for an orange slice from my backpack. We had been out along the coast for about seven hours now, longer than Becca had hoped, but I insisted we trudge along for the best spot to watch the sun cascade down the cliffs at dusk. We were now about a 20-minute walk from the scenic area I found out here alone last Tuesday morning and it was too late, the sun had completely disappeared and the trees were now creating a blanket of darkness within the forest.